


Don't Forget Winona

by kalliel



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Adolescence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Barstow, Brother Feels, Don't Forget Winona, Flagstaff, Flagstaff Arizona, Gen, Kingman, Roadtrip, Sam and Dogs, San Bernardino, Season/Series 03, Season/Series 05, first taste of freedom, that thing in Flagstaff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-08-10
Updated: 2010-08-10
Packaged: 2018-04-08 12:19:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,828
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4304805
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kalliel/pseuds/kalliel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam leaves on Dean's watch and jumps a Greyhound to Flagstaff, AZ. It's not a clean break.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Don't Forget Winona

**Author's Note:**

> I took the liberty of combining Bela and Bobby's "thing in Flagstaff" (3x10) and Sam's two-week fling in Flagstaff (5x16). For the prompt, "Sam collects post cards."

This is the spring things break.

First (and for _some_ people, foremost) is the Impala's radio. It swallows a cassette, spits up thirteen inches of chewed, jagged tape, and sets itself to a radio station that plays all static, all the time.

Golden oldies--pre-radio oldies. Dean is annoyed, Sam is grateful, and Dad doesn't care either way, because he's just been cleared for a backcountry pass, and he's gone before the $400 he leaves has even settled on the dresser.

$400 is awkward. It means he'll be gone a while--long enough that you need to make every penny count--but not long enough to settle in. Don't find a job. Don't find a school. Do _not_ make yourselves at home.

$400 is insanity.

It only follows that the second thing to go is Sam's patience. Dean lives straddled between the front seats of the Impala, whispering dirty innuendos at the tape deck. He splits the money $250/$150, because he hasn't forgotten the $100 Sam sent to California, in an envelope with an impressive amount of paperwork. Because he hasn't forgotten the (in Sam's opinion, even more impressive) statement of purpose printed on them.

"You wanna buy the milk?" Sam asks, poking his head through the open window. Dean is midway through telling the tape deck that if it's going to fuck Pink Floyd up the ass, it had better give the screwdriver a go, too. "I can get the bread."

"Get your own milk. That'd be, you know. The reason we split the cash." Right. Because Dean can't take what's Sam's if they're sharing it already.

"Well, do you have any change? I want to call Bobby and check to see if--if he got anything in the mail."

"If you go buy your own milk, you'll get your own change. Time to exercise your independence, Sam."

"Dude, seriously. You're an ass. Yeah, I applied to college, all right? So did 63% of people my age. Not exactly selling meth on the streets, here."

"Which is what 95% of kids your age are doing. You know how many of them just had $400 thrown at them? Now take that, and subract the number of tight-ass rich boys in the world. And to make this whole deal some college-level math, divide that by the number of tight-ass nerd boys who just spent their weekend hunting a demigod. That number? _That_ one's you."

Sam thrums his fingers against the car door, his irritation doing its best to make a mockery of the feeble sounds Dean has elicited from the radio. He moves to leave, and Dean says, "No soy milk." He doesn't look up.

 

ℵ

Sam doesn't buy soy milk. Sam buys a bus ticket.

 

ℵ

Sam feeds a mini pie--cherry--through the window.

"What's this for?" Dean catches it as it slides down the dashboard. His hands are disturbingly black and the Impala's radio is disturbingly gutted. He fixes Sam with a disturbingly probing stare.

The bus ticket burns so hot in Sam's pocket his face flushes red. He swears something's burning (though that might be the radio). Sam shrugs. "Peace offering?"

"A 79 cent pie isn't going to be some magical college permission slip, Sam."

Sam knows. "How's it going in there?" he asks.

It's Dean's turn to shrug. "I think she can play Living Daylights now. Here, listen."

"It still sounds like static and interference."

"Exactly."

Sam smiles. "You gonna come in soon? Sun's going down."

Dean brandishes a flashlight.

"Right. Well, don't expect me to sit around waiting to let you in. It hits two, and you're sleeping in the car."

Mock salute. "And Sammy?

 

"Thanks for the pie."

 

ℵ

At 5:40am, Dean is out, lulled to sleep by the victorious baseline that blares out of the Impala's again-functional radio, and Sam is gone.

 

ℵ

 

Sam wishes endings were clean. That endings cut, or frayed.

( _That endings severed the same way you riven stubborn tendons with your knife, and your fingers slip through the adipose tissue, and your hands swim through the blood and fat of the body of a demigod._

 _The mess flushes down the sink and you hands smell like motel soap. It's over and it's like it never happened. Maybe you_ did _sprain your wrist taking a bike down a hill without brakes, like you tell everyone at school.)_

When a hunt ends, all Sam wants to do is forget it happened. All Dad and Dean want to do is move on to the next one. It's not agreement, exactly, but it works. Sam wishes this ending were that clean.

Of course, it's not. Not when his drive dies down with his anger, life schedules itself to continue as usual.

The glow of the streetlight bounces over the reflective bus sign, and Sam's heart bounces too. Irritation, frustration--they're sleeping now. It's absolutely not okay; Sam refuses to lie to himself the way he's sure Dean does (he _has_ to; he can't really think-- He can't really be--). But $400 on a dresser and grocery tabs in his pocket and floating in California, moored by Dad's agenda...

_And Sammy? Thanks for the pie._

It's not bad. Not right now. But he has a bus ticket in his pocket, curled into the security of the $96 he has left, and no way to explain why he's out $54 when all he came home with was a carton of milk and a cherry pie. What's done is done.

He waits for the bus.

He waits for Dean to some running up out of the darkness, panting and swearing and ready to drag Sam's ass back and cuff him to the bathroom sink. He waits for the look Dean gives him, the shock and the hurt and the silent muddle of apology and accusation undercutting his vocalized rage. He waits for Dean to take him home, convince him that a pie and a radio and a knife under his pillow are all he needs.

The bus comes first.

 

ℵ

Flagstaff isn't a straight shot. A service station in Kingman, California meets them first--a layover, ten minutes. Breakfast and bathroom. Sam contemplates the paperback stuffed in his left jacket pocket, and the money he spent the bus ride feathering between its pages like bookmarks--ninety-six different starting points.

The kid manning the gas mart looks older than him, though not by much. His nametag proclaims him a five-year veteran of Gus's Quik Gas. The way his eyes follow Sam as he moves through the aisles of Slim Jims and peach rings is unnerving, though Sam isn't sure if it's because he's just narrowly avoided Five Year's future, or because that is now all he stands to achieve.

Five Year doesn't have a demigod's blood crusted into his cuticles.

"Do you take credit card?" Sam picks a postcard from a 5 cent stack by the cash register: King Me, I'm at Kingman.

Five Year deadpans, the way Dean does when Sam approaches poltergeists with anything but burning anticipation. He points to the pricetag, a gesture Sam nearly misses, because he imagines Five Year tackling him to the ground, just like Dean. Saying, _Watch your back, dude. Ghost almost nailed you with a teapot_ , just like Dean.

Reluctantly, Sam grabs a handful and stacks them atop his one. "I have ID. C'mon man."

Five Year _c'mon man_ s, and Samuel Randall signs a paper trail.

 

ℵ

Somewhere in Indiana, a computer charges 65 cents to Samuel Randall's credit account. It's a little bit suspicious.

In some lost piece of what might be Arizona, but could still be Nevada (the delineation between the beginning of one state and the end of another is fluid), Sam Winchester fingers thirteen postcards.

One is a picture of the Golden Gate Bridge, "Eureka! I've Found It!" emblazoned across the bottom in purple block print. Another is a cartoon of the Statue of Liberty, flouncing out of a room that appears to be occupied by Fidel Castro. "Love 'em and leave 'em," whispers the Statue, coquettishly. Sam thinks these postcards must have been made be someone who never lived in California. Or America, for that matter. Maybe someone from Mars.

The rest advertise Sam's escapades in places that are absolutely nowhere near Kingman--or anywhere in the Southwest. That's when he decides that they are places he will go. Where he will live, or visit. Where he will escape. These postcards are his roadmap for the future.

He doesn't need to remember where he's already been.

 

ℵ

He thinks about sending one to Dean. Dad won't be back; the motel address will be theirs for a few weeks, yet. He could send a postcard.

Maybe the one with the Statue of Liberty and Fidel Castro.

But his pen runs dry, and maybe that's a sign, because so does his throat when he tries to think of some witticism to scrawl on the back of the postcard. That's more Dean's thing. When Sam doesn't have anything to say, he just keeps quiet.

He folds the postcards into the pages of his paperback that aren't already bookmarked with dollar bills. Page 109.

 

ℵ

The bus passes skeletal big-city outcrops on its way to the Flagstaff Transit Center, crafted from billboards and false promises. The moment the bus halts, Sam backtracks to the city limits, which are littered with desperate lodgings and close-knit apartments. He's been here all of twelve minutes and he is already too familiar with the scenery.

Samuel Randall has $3.27 charged to his credit card by a grocery store that claims to be Arizona's finest, then a somewhat more respectable $40, from a motel that doesn't claim anything at all.

Inside his room, Sam puts down salt from a can that is newly his and eats a small cherry pie, also newly his. Except for the part where these are Dad's habits and Dean's favorites, he enjoys his first evening of freedom.

He thumbs through his paperback, and makes sure his money and his postcards are accounted for. Page 109 tells him _That's probably the only completely honest human I have ever met_ , and Sam promises himself he is not lying.

Television channels flash by like spokes on the world's most unappealing Wheel of Fortune.

He doesn't think the shower works. He hopes the lights don't; otherwise, their flickering portends far worse. He considers sleeping with his knife under his pillow, the way Dean does and the way Sam told himself he never would. He doesn't want to be Dean.

(Not anymore.) But then, there's a lot of things Sam doesn't want to be. It's what he _does_ he needs to figure out.

That's what he should be thinking about.

Instead, Sam wonders if Dean has met Five Year yet. What would happen when he does. What would happen if he never did. He wonders if Dean will pick up, if he calls.

He gets as far as the dial tone.

Maybe he'll send that postcard, instead. He reaches for the motel pen.

But it's dry, too.

 

ℵ

Flagstaff is empty and quiet, come morning. Sam isn't sure why he's surprised.

The quiet isn't unfamiliar--Dean's generally a pretty silent sleeper, though it depends on how much fun he has the night prior--but the empty is. Sam's paperback is on top of the Gideon Bible, and his knife is under his pillow. But the bathroom sink is void of bloody gauze and needles (sanitized no longer), and missing are the two heaps of laundry blocking the way to the shower--burn or salvage.

Sam stretches wide and locks his heels and fingers around both edges of the mattress. Lies like that, in the middle of the bed.

He has it to himself.

He turns to the window, with the light and the breeze washing in, and he can almost forget the filth lurking just outside.

The breeze. He turns into the breeze. Sweeping in from an open window.

Sam nearly strangles himself with the sheets, he jumps out of bed so quickly.

He slams the window down with a resounding crack, much to the displeasure of his next-room neighbors. The salt had been swept away by the wind, primarily, but he can see longer scuffs where it's been disturbed by something distinctly corporeal. He stands and stares as the seconds tick by, until the panic pulsing through his body corrals itself. _Calm down. It's not a big deal. Sure, maybe you narrowly avoided death by virtue of sheer dumb luck, but chances are you didn't. Chances are you're panicking over nothing, and you need to calm down, dude, because your family's brand of crazy is catching up to you._

Then he calls Bobby. So maybe he feels he should affirm his triumph of not having died stupidly in the night; what of it? He still needs to ask about his mail, anyway. The mail is the important part. _Deep breath, Sam. Don't fall to pieces now just because Dean and Dad's various dysfunctions aren't full-frontal, keeping you staunchly tethered on the proper side of sane._

"Boy, your family could stand to invest in cell phones. And tell your dad to stop faxin' me every damned motel number you pick up."

Sam says hello. Then he asks is Bobby'd maybe gotten anything in the mail. For him. You know... like an envelope? From California. But Bobby hasn't been home; he's working a job.

In Flagstaff.

"Oh God."

Sam falls back on the bed and screws his eyes shut. His free hand quests for the knife, buried under the disturbed bedding.

"You all right, kid?"

Sam replies in the affirmative, voice tight and high in a way it hasn't been in years. Bobby asks if John was looking for more info on the thing in California, whether he'd been back, an entire river of things addressed at a fast clip that Sam can't follow, because he's still staring at the window. He feels like an amateur.

He feels trapped. Because normal people never laid down salt, and most of them never got torn to shreds by a monster that didn't officially exist. So why did he have to end up in the one city where--

"Sam, where are you?"

 

...What?

 

"Dean's being awful quiet, 'cause I ain't hearing him yammering in the background, and you sound like you just saw--well. More than a ghost. What's going on?"

He swears to God Bobby must be standing outside; the acuity of his perceptions-via-phone is disturbing.

So Sam tells Bobby, and Bobby says "Shit!" and Sam has a feeling that wherever Dean is, he's saying _I told you so._ Bobby has a meeting with someone at nine. Bobby's tone of voice strongly implies expectations of Sam's attendance.

Shaken, Sam sets the phone down and picks up his paperback. He's surprised to find his postcards gone, as well as his money (though not all of it). His remaining bill marks Page 51: _A good hustler has a mask, looks the same to everybody._

_Nerves, Sam, nerves. Just think about this for a sec._

Something came in last night, didn't kill him, took his money (though not all of it), and his postcards. In a lifetime of hunting Weird, he's pretty sure that's as bizarre as it's ever been. At least angry demigods had clear motivation, intention. This was like some kind of practical joke. This was like--

Oh. _Oh._

Sam packs his paperback into his left pocket and his knife into his right, and leaves his room smiling.

 

ℵ

And he can't stop. Because last night was Dean. Because Dean found him. Because Dean understood.

And it's so _Dean_. Taking half his money and his awful postcards, fucking with the salt, because he _knew_. He knew Sam would notice. Just--everything. He half expects to see the Impala parked outside, with Dean waiting inside it, but it's not. Of course. It'd be like Dean to make him walk.

Sam finds his way back to the best grocery store in Arizona and waits for the bus under the store's overhang. The sun's coming out. And it all makes sense.

Dean is Bobby's appointment; that's why he wants Sam there. Maybe there isn't a hunt here at all. Maybe Dean had Bobby track Samuel Randall's card and they both came down for him. Maybe Bobby has a letter for him and Dean knows and Dean understands and Dean's cool with it and--

Sam steps inside Sourdough Sarah's and looks for a party of two.

 

ℵ

She's not Dean. She brushes chestnut hair over her shoulder, meets his stare, and Sam is sure he has never seen her before.

"You must be Sam Winchester. Pleasure," she says, in a voice that is very much not Dean's.

"The pleasure's mine." Sam smiles halfheartedly. His eyebrows twitch, _Bobby, who is she? (And where is Dean?)_

"Miss, another coffee!" She hails the waitress, laughs. At the back of Sam's mind, he thinks she's a little bit enchanting. A little bit. "Oh hardly, none for me. This gentleman here. Yes. Excellent. Charming."

Her smile and her pretenses drop as soon as the waitress flounces back to the kitchen. As she moves to leave, she turns back to Bobby. "I promise it's real. Sometimes they answer questions, but their preferred means of communicating is more along the lines of, 'We speak, and you listen.' If you're too selective they're less inclined to chat."

Bobby mutters something that sounds like, _Nice to know you're someone's bitch._

"You got what you asked for. Give me the amulet."

Bobby gives her the amulet.

The woman nods in Sam's direction. "You're quite generous, Sam Winchester. I'll admit I didn't expect you to give it away, but this will do." She gestures with her amulet as she shows herself out. "I'll be sure to keep you on my radar."

Sam nods numbly, then takes the seat across from Bobby. It's still warm. "What was that all about? Who _was_ that? And why am I generous?"

"That was _Winona_. Today, anyway." Bobby pockets a flat brown envelope.

"Is she a hunter?"

"Pretty friggin' far. You keep an eye out, Sam--being on her 'radar' ain't exactly good. Jesus, boy; sit down. Don't follow her. Just order your breakfast."

 

ℵ

Bobby stews his limp eggs and tabasco sauce. Sam just stews.

"Need a box for that?" Bobby points to Sam's french toast.

It's decomposing as they speak. Sam pokes at the trembling mass and the bread sinks into itself like a pocket of bog.

Coasters are pretty interesting. He can stack them up almost three stories before they fall.

He fixes his gaze on the condiments. Wonders why the different types of Equal are color-coded; they all taste the same.

"You ever gonna call your brother?"

Sam snorts. "He'd just come gunning for me, haul me back. And I don't-- I don't want...

"--Not yet."

"Would he?" is all Bobby offers.

He gives Sam a quizzical look when Sam slips Samuel Randall's card into the meal tab folio and pays for breakfast. He sees the paper trail attached to it, like a trail of pecuniary breadcrumbs; he knows Sam sees it, too.

"I just need some time to think about things." Almost eighteen years, now; is a little privacy too much to ask?

"It'll probably take Dean a while, if you don't call him--or at least bother to send a postcard." Bobby answers Sam's blank-faced _Why?_ with, Because you got two states between you, he's got no leads, and he probably thinks you'd be usin' your cash, not your card. Because you left him up a dry creek and he don't know the first place to start looking. His brother vanishes, and the credit report is probably the last place he's gonna start looking--if he even does. People aren't easy to find, Sam; not if you don't know their tells. You can't just follow the cattle mutilations and low pressure storms, like you're tracking some flamboyant bitch outta Hell.

"--Unless you're Bela. Winona." The last, Bobby adds in response to Sam's arched eyebrows. "I don't know how, but she got a lead on you last night. She come knocking?"

"Well--"

"Metaphorically."

"I guess, but she didn't... _do_ anything, or take anything. There wasn't really anything to take." Some teenage girl snuck into his room last night and stole his postcards. Fabulous. Just fabulous.

"Bela was the job."

"I'm getting that. Why? Is she--a shifter? Or a witch, or--"

"Just a Brit. A thieving, seance-guru Brit, but a Brit."

"What did she--what _does_ she want?"

"Penthouse suite in the Taj Mahal. On the moon. Oh, you mean today? Just something she thought you had. A pendant I gave you, what, almost a decade ago; it's nothing."

Dean's pendant; it has to be. Tentatively, "Is she going to keep looking?"

Bobby doesn't think so. For now, she is placated. "You'll know if she starts looking for you--she'll have already found you."

Encouraging.

Samuel Randall's card comes back with a copy of their receipt. "Bobby." And he pauses.

Bobby waits.

"--What did you mean, 'if you don't know their tells'?"

Bobby thinks back, shrugs. "All I was saying was, I didn't get the feeling you two've been all that close, lately.

"You're not five years old anymore, Sam."

 

ℵ

By the time Sam hikes out to Bobby's place--a cabin in Coconino, paid up 'til the end of the month; before he drives back to North Dakota, Bobby asks him if he could have found a _shadier_ motel for himself--a pall of sluggish apathy has already settled over his thoughts. He dumps his groceries on the table and slumps into one of the gritty lawn chairs in front of the fireplace. For a place Bobby's had rented all month, it does not look lived in.

He has never felt more alone in his life.

Of course they're close. Too close. If-you-turn-your-head-I-swear-to-God-I'll-bite-you close. He and Dean don't talk because that's not something their family does; it's always been that way. He can read frustration and worry in jawlines and shoulders and fingers; he and Dean both. He knows what satisfaction looks like, and amusement. Even if the words are empty, or the air is dead, and they're sitting in silence, Sam knows his brother better than anyone. And Dean knows him.

He knows a _thousand_ things about Dean that no one else could even dream of--seven hundred of which are _That's fascinating Dean, but dude. TMI._ And with the time Dean spends nitpicking and ridiculing Sam's habits, Sam's willing to bet Dean's repertoire overshadows his twiceover.

Because Dean watches.

 _So how come he didn't see this coming, hotshot?_ some part of Sam argues, as his eyes cruise the blank brown walls, decorated in spideweb and old swallows' nests.

Maybe he did. Maybe he did, and he didn't care.

Maybe he'll tell Dad, and then he'll just check out, and finally wash his hands of Little Brother.

Sam laughs in spite of himself. Because _that_ \--that's been a rule since time began. Whatever happens or whatever you do, you absolutely do not tell Dad. (You're not five years old anymore, Sam.)

But Dean knows Dad better than he knows himself, and there are things that go on between the two that Sam knows he will never understand. Some shared desperation, or ragged concession or some rule, some half-baked 'truth' about the world that Sam doesn't see and honestly? doesn't think he wants to. Because whatever it is, it's dragging them across the country and running them into the ground and it's not ever going to stop. Not unless someone turns around to face the current, refuses to accept that this is the best they can do.

That the rundown motels and the late nights in the Impala spent choking down a days-old sandwich--windows rolled up and the blood in the air sealed in--are what this family is worth.

And maybe Bobby's right. Because even if he knows what shuts Dean down, what Dean loves, what Dean was doing at 3:42am on April 16th last year, he doesn't have a fucking clue _why_. And Sam told Dean why he was applying to Stanford, why he wanted out, so yeah--Dean does know why. Or he should. It doesn't mean he understands.

"I know everything about you," Sam says to the dead air, disbelief breaking the words in uneven places. "And you're still a total stranger."

The dark wood walls and the heady scent of mold close around him.

"And the scariest part is, you know even less about me."

 

ℵ

Sam hides the dark emptiness of the walls under postcards. They were in the brown paper sheath Bela gave to Bobby; Bobby said they were for Dad, and to tell him that these are the spirit world's Weekly World crib notes. Also to tell him that he'd better be damned grateful.

Bela's parting gift.

He's added a few to the mix, Flagstaff postcards he picked up with the groceries, colorful artists' renditions of Route 66, but he picks out his old cards with sentimental familiarity. Eureka I've Found It! and Lady Liberty getting it on with Fidel Castro.

There are messages on the back, written in thin, factory-perfect script.

Salvation, Iowa. _April is the cruelest month._

River Grove, Oregon. Pearl Harbor.

Cold Oak, South Dakota. Tree rings.

Cold Oak's postcard boasts an oversaturated image of a large bell with a tree engraved on it. Tree rings. Tree _rings_. Cute. But the names and what Sam surmises are clues add up to astonishingly little. If Bela can commune with spirits and Bobby's sent them as a puzzle for Dad, they must be about what killed Mom. But if Bobby sent them with Sam, and then sent Sam to the middle of some forest near Flagstaff, then it also means a little backburner time won't kill anyone. The postcards, arcane spirit riddles face down, will serve a worthier purpose for now.

He fixes them to the wall with small bits of duct tape and wood glue.

These are the places he will go.

 

ℵ

Problem is, he doesn't really want to leave.

This place is his now. And somehow, with the cards on the wall and the groceries on the table, life feels so much more secure than it would cold on the side of the road, trying to hitch a ride.

He sits. It's too dark to read, and the electricity is out again.

The whites and yellows of his wall of postcards glow. _Take the highway; that's best._

 

ℵ

The dog wanders in around five in the morning, with the sun. Tags reveal he's registered with a vet in St. Louis. His name is McCoy.

Sam calls him Bones.

Bones likes fetch, belly rubs, and sloppy joes. Sam likes the company.

Marie and Louise Maheney eventually locate his cabin, in search of their dog. They tell Sam that they're surprised his parents would let him camp all the way out there by himself; he must be quite the responsible young man, and is he an Eagle Scout? Bones likes him; he must have a dog at home, he gets along so well with animals.

No dog; just a brother. Sam lies through his teeth but his smile never falters. Somewhere between explaining that his father had been his pack leader when he was a Cub Scout, and that he was in the middle of cataloguing wildlife in the Coconino Forest as part of an internship with the park services, he grins, and _that's_ real.

It's all real.

 

ℵ

He could go for a hike. Whenever he wants--he could go for a hike. Dad would give them free reign for days, never ask what they had planned. What crowd they were running with. If you were ready for every hunt and you weren't getting arrested or being otherwise expensive, you were free. But Sam had never once gone on a hike. Never for the pure sake of hiking, anyway.

When he laces his boots and opens the door onto the dappled trail that leads up through the forest heartland, Sam breathes in deep and realizes he doesn't have to follow anyone.

 

 

On the sixth day, Sam runs out of salt. It falls through cracks or is eaten by deer or is blown asunder by the ceiling fan, and he runs out. Then he goes to sleep without it. And when he wakes up and everything is undisturbed, he takes the knife from under his pillow and places it on the bedside table. He never puts it back.

 

 

Nine days in, he tries making potstickers. They came in a big pre-made bag and assure him that all he has to do is drop them in a lightly oiled pan, but the whole concept is something of a novelty, as are chopsticks, and Sam admits he falls in love. He smiles into his Pepsi as he rubs at a grease spot on his paper plate. His hands smell like peanut sauce, instead of lye and ammonia over blood.

Maybe he'll buy real dishes.

 

 

Day Eleven. He goes to town and buys a map and a bus schedule. Eats lunch at a Thai restaurant that doesn't take MasterCard. It drains his paperback of the last of its dollar bill bookmarks, but he brings his leftovers back in soft white Styrofoam and pad thai and soup carry him all the way through Day Twelve, so it's okay.

 

 

Sam plots his route with relish, basks in its carelessness and liberation and _sureness_. For the first time, he feels safe. Not protected, not trained, not backed up--safe. Apart. Out. Black and blue lines criss-cross America, jagged when they hit a rut in the table. To Bobby's first; South Dakota. Then Cold Oak, and its tree-ringing bell (or whatever). The lines run through most of the Rockies. A hopeful blue diverges toward Stanford; a more conservative black runs through Lawrence, Kansas and out toward the Midwest.

He'll get jobs; real ones. Take out an apartment, maybe. Buy a phone, and call his brother at the cell numbers Bobby will have convinced them to register. They'll keep in touch. Dean will be angry at first, but Sam knows Dean, and Dean will be happy for him.

Maybe Dean will join him someday. Dad, too. Together, they'll let go. They will all let go, and they will be everything that's been missing from the last eighteen years. But if they don't, Sam has a contingency plan. Because like it or not, he's Sam Winchester, and there are always contingency plans. If they don't, Sam will go it alone. The idea is raw and clammy for the first few days, but Sam knows what he wants and he knows what he has to do to get it. It's a Winchester trait, but this is the first time Sam feels like it's really been his.

He should go to sleep now. There's a bus to catch early tomorrow morning. _His_ bus. Sam feels warm and content and crosses his floor and sets tomorrow's clothing on his nightstand and gets in his bed between his sheets and folds the marked-up map into his paperback. Page one again. A new beginning. The page reads, _When hostilities ceased everyone had his wounds._

(A new beginning.)

Wounds, maybe. But some won their liberty as well, and that was worth everything.

 

ℵ

Then Dad breaks in. It's a quarter past three, and the flashlight that zeros in on him in sleep, the lightning way the sheets strip from his body with a crack, the hand pressing down on him, firm pressure at his clavicle--that's Dad.

Dad doesn't say a word. The contingency argument Sam has filed at the back of his mind falls behind a shroud of confusion, shame.

Dad is this bleak grey shadow, washed out by the flashlight. He is absolutely silent. Sam can't even see his face, can't decide whether his touch means _Don't move a damned muscle_ or _There you are, Sammy_.

He leaves.

Sam can't hear anything but his own racing pulse, harried breaths. He stays put, sprawled over a naked mattress in the dark. He has never been so terrified of his own father.

Dean is next. He looks like he's straddling frustrated tears and some kind of violent meltdown, which Sam honestly hasn't seen in years, and never thought he'd see again. He's also sporting a peacock's melange of blue-purple-yellow across his face. He hesitates before crossing the threshold of Sam's cabin.

"What happened to _you_?" Sam asks, when Dean says nothing.

"What the fuck do you think. Just hurry the hell up and get in the car."

Sam complies, feet cold when they hit the floor. He follows Dean's gaze as Dean scans the grocery table, the wall of postcards.

"We need those," says Sam. "Bobby says they're for Dad."

Dean scoffs. "Bobby. Yeah, we're headed there next. Dad's got something to settle with him, apparently can't be done by phone."

"Bobby's probably going to shoot him if he tries anything."

"Yeah, well Dad don't care." Dean starts ripping the postcards from the wall, little care paid to their preservation. Sam helps.

The wall looks bare and desolate, with uneven bits of postcard and duct tape a white rash against the darkness.

"We had a fight."

Sam falters, surprised by the sudden interjection into their separate sullen silences, and rips one of the postcards in half.

"Me and Dad."

"About what?" Sam has a fair notion about _what_ (whom, rather), but Dean doesn't answer.

"Bobby said you were askin' about mail."

Sam's turn to escape into silence. Until finally, soft and tentative as he pulls the last postcard from the wall. "Did I? I mean, did I get..."

Dean coughs. "Yeah."

"Oh."

Silence, pouring out from the walls.

"At least--" Dean starts. Hollow laughter. "I know where you're gonna be, come September. This Samuel Randall guy's a wily bastard, you know that? Credit card record's a little eccentric, Sammy."

Sam turns away, smiles at the floor. "But you looked."

"Yeah, well, Bobby helped. Eventually."

"And you're, uh. With my mail... you're good with that?"

Dean hands him the postcards. "I stopped expecting favors from you a long time ago." He turns away and walks out.

It's not exactly what Sam was hoping for. His legs are leaden.

Dean stops just beyond the threshold of the cabin. "C'mon, Sam. Let's go." When Sam doesn't move, he says, "I still have six months to change your mind. And you need to tell me about the last two weeks. If you spent the entire time sitting up here by yourself and there wasn't even a hot chick involved, so help me God..."

Sam puts the postcards in his pocket with his paperback--page one--and follows. "You know? There actually was."


End file.
